Small Taming, Line 3

Legge's translation gives the third line as the third nine, undivided, suggesting the idea of a carriage from which the strap beneath has been removed, or of a husband and wife looking upon each other with averted eyes. The accompanying commentary reads that husband and wife look upon each other with averted eyes because the subject of this line cannot rightly govern his household.

Nine in the third place sits at the top of Qian, the lower trigram, directly beneath the fourth line, the single yielding line whose restraint gives Small Taming its name. Where the first two lines returned to their own course with no resistance felt at all, here the pressure of that restraint is finally close enough to cause visible strain. The image of a carriage stripped of the strap that should bind its wheel to its axle, or of a married couple no longer able to face each other directly, describes something that still functions but only under evident tension, a caution rather than an outright disaster.

This is the point in the hexagram where the small, gentle force above first makes its presence felt in the lower trigram, and Legge's commentary frames the trouble as domestic and relational rather than catastrophic. The line still belongs to the correct, strong trigram of Heaven, but it is the line closest to the check, and the strain it shows is the price of that proximity.

Nine in the third place, taken as a changing line, warns of strain rather than failure, the household image of a couple who can no longer look at each other directly, or a cart whose binding strap has slipped. The querent is shown the cost of standing at the exact boundary where a gentle restraint first presses against a strong, advancing force, close enough to feel checked without yet being stopped.

Flipping this line changes the lower trigram from Qian to Dui, Lake, giving Xun over Dui, the hexagram called Inner Truth. The tension of averted eyes and a loosened strap resolves, on the far side of change, into a hexagram built on sincerity reaching even the least approachable creatures, pigs and fish, an image of trust so complete it needs no visible bond at all. The movement is striking: the very line that shows strained, indirect relations is the one whose transformation produces the hexagram most associated with unforced, penetrating good faith.

In the arc of Small Taming, the third line marks the last position before the yielding fourth line itself, the point where the small force's proximity is felt most sharply by the still unchecked trigram beneath it. A reading landing here suggests that present strain is not the end of the matter, and that what looks like strained connection can, once changed, become the hexagram's own picture of trust restored.